Glue You HD

[Condoman44]

On Monday, December 29, 2014 I planned to assemble the first of 5 plywood storage units that will cover the wall of our bedroom. This will replace the dressers, small bookcase and empty space making it more efficient and providing needed storage.

On the day before I just happen to check that my next in line bottle of glue was all set to use, it was not! In fact it had turned almost solid.

I sent a note to Gorilla Glue mentioning that I thought it should have lasted longer as I bought it sometime in 2014. In the meantime I picked a new bottle up to allow the glue up of this unit.

After a few back and forth emails Gorilla kindly sent a new bottle and educated me on the 2 year shelf life and date code marking. I was intrigued enough to find the receipt from the orange store. The glue was purchased 2/15/2014 and was already 6 years old at that time.

Shame on you HD, that should not have been on the shelf.

Thank you Gorilla for the replacement.

[atgcpaul]

I wish there was a better and more uniform way to decipher product age--somehow incorporated into the UPC--rather than date "codes". I volunteer at a food pantry and we have a policy to not distribute expired canned food (we do realize it's most likely still good and put the expired food into a "use at your own risk bin"). We have people that sort through all the donated items and check date codes. I don't know how grocery stores tackle the problem without constant inventory checks. How nice it would be be to check your database and know by barcode which ones are expired or near expiration rather than constantly having to look? Maybe when everything is RFID tagged, there will be a resolution.

[capncarl]

We recently had a number of WinnDixie grocery stores close and they sold all the all the groceries. I noticed a lot of their stock on the shelves 3-4 years out of date. A lot of these out of date items was cerials, cake mixes and other food that could not possibly still be any good but we're still for sale. Poor management not to rotate stock, probably part of the reason they are closing.
capncarl

[gerti]

This bugs me: glue, shellac etc have a limited shelf life, so why not but the date of manufacture on there in plain text, instead of having to hunt down the explanation of a "date code" at a web sites FAQ? Zinser is guilty, Titebond, Gorilla...

[atgcpaul]

This bugs me: glue, shellac etc have a limited shelf life, so why not but the date of manufacture on there in plain text, instead of having to hunt down the explanation of a "date code" at a web sites FAQ? Zinser is guilty, Titebond, Gorilla...

I think all or most of us know there is a date code on Titebond glues, but how many of us remember how to decipher it? It also seems to be a popular question on WWing forums over many other glue related questions, but where does Franklin put the answer? 2nd from the bottom and they don't even mention "date" in the question, just lot number.

http://www.titebond.com/frequently_asked_questions.aspx

And if you searched for the answer and came across this Wood magazine article, you'd be SOL because Franklin updated their coding system in 2009.

http://www.woodmagazine.com/material...the-glue-code/

Yes, it will cost some money to use more ink to print a legible date and some for software development, but you'd think they'd realize this would build good will and maybe some brand loyalty. I'd be OK with paying a few cents more to not have to deal with the frustration of glue gone bad.

I'm wondering, though, if the retailers don't want it. If the OP had either checked the code or had an easy to read date or the retailer had preemptively removed the bottle, that's lost revenue for the seller.